The Supreme Court’s ruling to make it unconstitutional for colleges and universities to rely on race as an admissions factor will not have a direct impact on companies’ diversity agendas—but will have a “chilling effect,” Forbes reports.

Striking down affirmative action at institutions of higher learning could also lead to a spate of lawsuits against companies over their hiring and employment practices, legal and education experts say.

Nevertheless, companies are expected to continue to pursue their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, albeit more surreptitiously and under a different name and focus.

Corporate America genuinely committed to diversity will “drop the diversity angle” and focus, instead, on the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s requirement to not discriminate, says Alvin Tillery, political science professor and director of Northwestern’s Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy.

Companies not committed to diversity will just stop talking about it, Tillery adds.

Don Harris, associate dean and DEI liaison at Temple University School of Law, agrees with Tillery that, at least at the outset, the Supreme Court’s Thursday decision will not affect anything outside of higher learning.

However, notes Stacy Hawkins, vice dean of law at Rutgers University, who specializes in employment law and diversity, if the ruling is not narrowly interpreted to apply only to academic admissions practices, it might impact company hiring and diversity.

Harris believes however the ruling is interpreted by the companies, academia and the courts, it will encourage future litigation.

“The writing’s on the wall,” Harris says. “It’s a recipe for people to then start bringing other cases before the court” centered on diversity practices.

It will have a “chilling effect” on diversity in America, the academics agree.

Some DEI critics say the diversity trend, spurred by protests after the murder of George Floyd, is doomed to be short-lived. More corporate speak, DEI is not systematically backed by company actions, they say.

Nevertheless, 80% of U.S. companies are now estimated to have some kind of DEI in place. In the past four years, there was a 168.9% increase in the hiring of chief diversity officers, according to LinkedIn.

Today, DEI and affirmative action is regulated by federal and state employment anti-discrimination laws and Dodd Frank’s Title XII regarding equal access to financial products and services. These laws preclude companies from considering race when hiring, even if the objective is to increase diversity.

DEI could, indeed, turn out to be a transient trend, especially in light of today’s Supreme Court’s ruling. There was a 4.5% decrease in the hiring of DEI chiefs in the past year, and a number of major companies—including Amazon, Twitter, Wayfair and Nike—have eliminated the positions.

A secondary but important impact of the ruling is concern among large corporations about how the gutting of affirmative action will impact the talent pool of new hires.

Ahead of the ruling by the highest court, 60 companies—including General Electric, Apple and Starbucks—filed a brief in support of the admissions practices at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.

The corporations argued that “racial and ethnic diversity enhance business performance” and said they rely on diverse graduates to recruit.

“Acknowledging, supporting and promoting the benefits of diversity—specifically including racial and ethnic diversity—is essential to meet client needs, achieve business goals and strengthen relationships both internally and within the communities serve(d),” they wrote.